Italian Restaurant

Claudio Blotta and his wife Adria Tennor of barbrix restaurant and wine bar and Cooks County plan to open a new restaurant in Atwater Village this spring. The site is the former Acapulco on Glendale Boulevard. “We don't have a name yet. The project is that new,” says Blotta. “It will be Italian and we'll have a wood-burning oven for pizza, a wood-burning grill - and a full bar. I'm excited about that. I love a Negroni.” Architect Osvaldo Maiozzi (Rivera, Petty Cash, Republique, etc.)

Two men were arrested Saturday on suspicion of trying to rob an Italian restaurant in northern San Diego County at gunpoint -- a robbery thwarted, authorities said, when an employee of the restaurant fired eight shots at the suspects, hitting both. The two suspects were first interviewed by sheriff's deputies at an emergency room where they sought treatment for their wounds. The explanation offered by the two that they'd been shot while walking near an Oceanside park seemed suspicious, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

The scene in a fabled Italian restaurant would have done "The Sopranos" TV writers proud. Police said Broadway chanteuse Rena Strober was singing at Rao's, an East Harlem restaurant, Monday night when a patron, Albert Circelli, criticized her performance. Reputed Luchese crime family associate Louis Barone told him to watch his mouth, but when Circelli swore, Barone shot him in the back, police said. A second shot fired by Barone hit another diner, Al Petraglia. Circelli died of his wounds.

When the stylish New Genesis Apartments opened last year on skid row, residents and advocates were pleased that the project would provide housing for dozens of homeless people, as well as support services aimed at tackling addiction and mental illness. In a neighborhood where rapid gentrification has brought $145 sushi and brow waxings to skid row's historic core, the mixed-use project was seen as a rare opportunity for homeless people to live side-by-side with artists and other renters as they work to rejoin society.

At times, Spumante seems like two restaurants: One has wonderful Italian food; the other serves mediocre versions of California-Southwest-Mexican cooking. You could, for instance, come to Spumante and start with cozze e vongole (at a reasonable $6.50), a wonderful herbed tomato broth with with mussels, clams and other seafood heaped in.

A bomb exploded on a Ventura Boulevard sidewalk early Monday, damaging an Italian restaurant across the street, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. A police bomb squad was called to Il Tiramisu, 13705 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, about 3:15 a.m. after the bomb destroyed one of the restaurant's ceiling-high glass doors, police said. No one was injured in the restaurant, which is closed on Mondays.

The self-transformation of an old-fashioned neighborhood bar into a tony eatery isn't quite as surprising as would be, say, the sudden decision of a punk guitarist to devote his life to the study of Mozartian nuances, but it is unusual. The Secret Harbor in Coronado for years was the kind of neighborhood place at which regulars traded tall tales over a couple of cold ones.

From the street, on the Santa Monica end of Wilshire Boulevard, the new restaurant Drago glows with soft, pale light. Its glass front, its blond wood, its chairs draped in cream-colored slipcovers, have a calming effect as you walk in. It's a beautiful restaurant and many of the dishes are spectacular, full of the sort of intense and complex flavors that you usually don't find in week-old restaurants.

The question of where to dine when in Bonsall has been at least partly solved by the opening of Sazio, a full-service Italian restaurant in the new River Village shopping complex. Sazio constitutes something of an about-face for this rustic community, since the restaurant's mood reaches for the urban and its menu is reasonably sophisticated.

Rose De Santis doesn't give up easily. If she did, she never would have lasted the eight months it took to open her new Italian restaurant in Wilmington. Yes, Ristorante De Santis has opened. And yes, you can enjoy a glass of wine or beer with your meal. "I feel great, as light as a feather," an overjoyed De Santis said last week. "Before I was carrying so much weight around, I wasn't even sleeping."

Claudio Blotta and his wife Adria Tennor of barbrix restaurant and wine bar and Cooks County plan to open a new restaurant in Atwater Village this spring. The site is the former Acapulco on Glendale Boulevard. “We don't have a name yet. The project is that new,” says Blotta. “It will be Italian and we'll have a wood-burning oven for pizza, a wood-burning grill - and a full bar. I'm excited about that. I love a Negroni.” Architect Osvaldo Maiozzi (Rivera, Petty Cash, Republique, etc.)

Santa Monica's landmark Valentino restaurant celebrated it's 40th birthday this winter with a couple months of festivities. But will it make 41? Maybe not. Owner Piero Selvaggio has put the restaurant up for sale. The price is high -- $4.9 million - but it is an attractive piece of real estate with a lot of restaurant history attached. “I have a big piece of real estate and it's not producing what it could produce,” says the 67-year-old Selvaggio. Plus, he says, he's ready for a new challenge.

Large classical music ensembles are no strangers to economic challenges, but the Santa Monica-based Verdi Chorus may be the only one whose existential crisis came when an Italian restaurant went out of business. The opera-only ensemble of about 50 voices has lived to tell the tale, and this weekend, it will celebrate its 30th anniversary while also honoring the 200th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, the great composer after whom it is only tangentially named. The chorus began in 1983 as a house organ of Verdi Ristorante di Musica, a fancily redone former Wilshire Boulevard funeral parlor where singing was as much a fixture as veal scaloppine.

No need to shout Lakers Coach Mike D'Antoni, on the effectiveness of yelling at his players after poor performances: "If they're good guys, you don't need to yell at them. If they're bad guys, it doesn't matter. " Scenes from an Italian restaurant David Stern, on his first NBA draft after becoming commissioner in 1983: "We took over an Italian restaurant. I commented to the guys, 'Do you think we could find a restaurant where part of the ceiling isn't lower so our players can stand?

In the nearly 20 years that Fernando Ojeda has owned a downtown restaurant, he's seen the expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center and construction of the Staples Center and LA Live. Each time, the increased foot traffic boosted sales at his restaurant, Fernando's Taco Inn, which sits directly across from the entertainment complex. So when news broke Thursday that AEG chief executive Tim Leiweke would be leaving his post -- leading to speculation that his departure could delay or scrub a downtown football stadium -- Ojeda was disappointed.

California rarely feels more like California than it does from a window seat at the new Hostaria del Piccolo in Venice, where life's great pageant rolls by. Graying tax attorneys cruise by on Rollerblades, women toss yoga mats into the back of their Porsches and handsome young families roll by on their bicycles as serenely as if they were ducks. As you regard the glass of wine in front of you, you may contemplate a Westside drinking game, doing shots of on-tap Merlot every time you spot a dude with interesting facial hair, a knit cap, tie-dye and a skateboard; hear a distant drum circle; or smell a clove cigarette.

Well, well. Everybody's dressed to the nines here, and Glendale doesn't dress up for just anything. Not only that, but every last seat in the place seems to be filled. Granted, it's Saturday night, but a local informant calculates that there are probably more people in Far Niente Ristorante at this moment than in the movie theater next door. Location, location, location. Far Niente is a good, full-bore Westside-type Italian restaurant in Glendale.

The first time I looked at Vitello's menu (someone had mailed me a copy) I thought, "This isn't going to be my kind of place." Like a lot of people, I'm drawn to the newer, trendier variety of Italian restaurants; the architected trattorias and bistros specializing in cucina rustica and the simple dishes of Northern Italy. Vitello's, from the menu, looked like a classic old-style Italian restaurant.

The gig: Wing Lam, co-founder of Wahoo's Fish Taco, is the face of the surf-inspired taco chain, with 65 restaurants in seven states. The company started almost 25 years ago in an old Italian restaurant near a stretch of industrial office plazas in Costa Mesa. The business: Wahoo's, the fast-casual taco chain, serves up grilled fish tacos with Asian and Brazilian influences in brightly colored restaurants where the walls are covered floor to ceiling with stickers and surfing memorabilia.

A.O.C. , the iconic wine bar and small plates restaurant from chef Suzanne Goin and partner Caroline Styne, is moving west on 3rd Street to the location of Il Covo . A.O.C. at its current location will close at the end of the year, and the new A.O.C. is expected to open in early 2013. “Suzanne and I had been trying to think of a big way to celebrate our 10 th anniversary,” said Styne in a release. “[We] have fond memories of dining on the Orso patio throughout the 1980s; it's one of the most beautiful and enchanting in Los Angeles.